Topic: An Interesting Afternoon

[SlowModem]

About 30 minutes before I got off work this afternoon, there was a severe storm warning for the area where I live.  Watching my instruments remotely, we got 1/2 inch of rain in 10 minutes and high winds.  The power went off, but I have UPSs on the computer, webcam, etc.  My wife called and said the UPSs were beeping and she doesn't know how to turn the beeping off.  I didn't know either.  She ended up unplugging the UPSs and turning them off.  So the weather station and webcam bit the dust until I got home.

On the drive home, a few minutes from work I was detoured by a policeman and had to go around town because of trees down in the road.  The only highway to my house was blocked for miles, so I decided to try to go an alternate route.  I went by the other end of town and there were big big trees blown over and a gas station roof over the pumps had blown away.  There must have been a really really bad storm there.  I later heard on the scanner the police were calling it an F-1.

Anyway I got home and the power was still off.  I tried to turn the UPS back on, but I couldn't get it to stop beeping.  I found the instructions, and it said to push the power button twice quickly to turn off the alarm.  It didn't work.  So the UPSs had to be turned off again to maintain domestic tranquility.

The power finally came back on at 12:00 midnight.  It was off for 9 hours.  I think lightning must have hit the substation or something bad like that.  They never tell us, but it had to be something pretty drastic for the outage ot last that long.

So tomorrow I've got to experiment with the UPS and the alarm, or they're going to have to go.  I don't know why they beep anyway.  I know when the power goes off.  I don't need the UPS to remind me every 30 seconds.  Geeze Louise!

I haven't heard of any injuries (luckily), but there are reports of trees on cars and houses, and wind damage.  Some quarter-sized hail was reported north of Knoxville.  We ended up with 0.84 inches out of that storm, and now it's raining again.  I should have a pretty good report to cocorahs in the morning!

[DanS]

Wow, sure sounds like there was the energy for, or from, a twister. Happy to hear you could get home alright.

If all else fails with attempts to quiet the UPs's, look inside and unsolder the little piezo buzzer (looks like attached). I did that to 2 I use. They'll drive you up a wall if the power stays off long enough.

(you could try just a piece of tape over the piezo opening first but don't know how much quieter it'll make it.)

[SlowModem]

Thanks!  I'll have to see if Dad has a soldering iron.  I don't know why they make things that beep. It is so annoying.   

[DanS]

I'm still taking in the '1/2 of rain in 10 minutes'.  Jumping Jehosaphat!!

[SlowModem]

I stopped by yesterday afternoon and took a couple of pics of where the tornado went through.  The NWS has officially classified it as an F-0.  There's a lot of people that are lucky that there wasn't more damage.  Notice the houses that suffered minimal damage among the twisted off trees.

http://www.roanecounty.com/content/blown-away

[Farmtalk]

Glad to hear that structural damage was kept to a minimum! That's some wild stuff! I hear about that stuff going on in the Plains fairly regularly, but you never expect it near your community!